Remarkable growth in the demand for communications products and services, and especially in the requirements for portable communications devices, has driven consumer requirements for low-cost, small-form-factor, low-power RF (radio frequency) transceivers. In addition, the development of state-of-the-art wireless applications has encouraged consumers to expect both the convenience of extended connectivity and the benefit of enhanced services. RF transceivers that operate in compliance with multiple prevailing standards are instrumental, if not required, in the satisfaction of these objectives. In this regard, the capabilities of CMOS (complementary metal/oxide/semiconductor) and BiCMOS (bipolar/CMOS) VLSI (very large scale integration) technology are particularly well suited to the accommodation of very aggressive levels of mixed-signal integration, as well as to the provision of increasing functionality in a single-chip RF integrated circuit (IC) device.
In general, the signal received by an RF transceiver IC from an antenna is typically a single-ended signal. However, the input IC (RF transceiver, for example) designed to process the signal from the antenna may be either single-ended or differential. Providing a differential input to the IC is desirable because any interfering signal that affects both of the differential inputs equally is cancelled. Unfortunately, converting a single-ended signal from the antenna into a differential signal for the IC requires a balanced-to-unbalanced converter (balun). Baluns tend to be expensive, introduce loss, and do not provide an ideally flat passband. Therefore, in many cases it is desirable to avoid the use of a balun and simply arrange the IC to receive the single-ended signal.
Typically an RF transceiver IC will be designed to accept either a single-ended input or differential input, but not both. It is difficult to handle both single-ended and differential inputs, in large part due to the disparate input impedance requirements for the single-ended and differential inputs.
For RF signals, the input impedance to the IC needs to match the source impedance of the signal source that provides the input. If the antenna drives the single-ended input to the IC directly, the input impedance of the IC must be equal to the source impedance (Rs) of the antenna. In situations where a balun is used to effect single-ended to differential conversion, the impedance present at each of the differential input pins of the IC must be equal to one-half the antenna source impedance, i.e., Rs/2.